


to know a hawk from a handsaw

by recryption



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bittersweet Ending, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Canon, it's romantic if you want it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22112512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recryption/pseuds/recryption
Summary: It’s been a lifetime since the events at Elsinore, a lifetime trying to moveonfrom the events at Elsinore, but Horatio still feels like he’s being haunted by his everpresent memories of the past.Little does he know that, soon enough, he’ll be haunted by something else -- or rather, somebodyelse -- as well.(Alternatively: Horatio writes the play,Hamlet-- with a little help on the side, of course.)
Relationships: Hamlet & Horatio
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	to know a hawk from a handsaw

Horatio isn’t sure where, how, or _why_ such a stupid idea could start so innocently haunting his brain, but after he leaves Elsinore and shuts himself back up in his dorm at Wittenberg to study and cry and do God-cares what else, he thinks, _well,_ _it’d be a really good idea to write a play_.

He’s also not sure where, how, or why the stupid idea takes a more solid form and he starts actually entertaining it as something plausible instead of as the pipe-dream-throwaway-thought hybrid that it should’ve stayed as, but it starts haunting his brain more intensely than any flight of fancy he thinks he’d ever had before. It’s not a question of _why_ , exactly. It’s not even a question of _want_ , if Horatio really narrows it down. It’s a question of how well Horatio can fulfill his dead lord’s dying wishes, and, if he had to be honest with himself, his success has been- limited, at best.

There’s a reason he’s sitting at his desk in the middle of the night, his face lit only by the dim glow of the candle sat at the corner of his desk, a stack of paper and an inkwell at his side as he gnaws at the back of his pen. He’d checked out a few theater arts books the day before, which already ranked among the Top Three Most Awkward Experiences Horatio’d Ever Had -- the librarian had given him an odd look, asking what a young doctor-in-training was doing going into _playwriting_ , of all things, and Horatio had to laugh sheepishly and claim that he was checking them out for a friend but everybody knew that the only other people Horatio talked to in his dorm were other future doctors, which only raised _further_ questions about which student was deviating so far from the path their parents set out for them-

Anyway.

Horatio cracks his fingers and looks down at the empty page, which almost seems to glare right back at him, accusation written all over it even though there’s nothing actually _on_ the paper, yet. Horatio wonders, for a brief second, if material objects really _are_ as lifeless as they make themselves out to be.

“‘Tis nothing more than the first act,” Horatio mumbles under his breath, scrawling “ACT I” in neat capital letters across the top of the page. “The first scene. The book I read- this scene is meant to be nothing more than the exposition, if my recollection proves to be correct.”

Horatio pauses. His eyes stray from their intended focus as they follow a drop of wax slowly making its way down from the wick of his candle. There are four words on the page, and none of them have to do with the events that he wants to actually be writing about.

All of a sudden, he thinks, in startling clarity, _God have mercy, I am not a playwright_.

Well, it has to take place in Elsinore -- he knows that much, at least. The book he’d vaguely skimmed through the night before had claimed that each scene needed a setting, a couple characters, and the whole spectacle had been _confined_ to the royal court of Elsinore. So he has a _setting_ , at least. What next?

A moment. An inciting incident. Something that kicked off the Everything Else. He thinks back to -- that bitingly cold night, in front of the castle gates, when he’d seen the dark eyes of the elder Hamlet glowering down at him and Francisco and Bernardo like they were nothing more than ants at the foot of an uncaring giant, those eyes that’d driven Hamlet into the diseased madness that proceeded to drive apart the rest of the court. Nice, neat cursive: “Francisco at his post. Enter to him, Bernardo.”

Alright, a good start, Horatio. He unconsciously wipes at his brow. He’d been avoiding it, but the more he thinks about it-

God, what had actually _happened?_ It didn’t feel like it’d been a few weeks -- it felt like it’d been an entire damn _lifetime_. Did he even remember- did he even _want_ to remember? That’s the more important question, really.

Horatio sinks back into his chair. There are less than fifteen words on the page, and he’s already exhausted. His candle flickers in the sudden draft that rushes through his room, and Horatio curses, wrapping his coat more tightly around himself and wishing that he’d had the foresight to just forget about this whole play idea and be in bed, where he _should_ be. He reaches forward to dip his pen in the inkwell- and another draft puts out his candle, startling Horatio enough to knock his inkwell over. By the time he relights his candle, half his paper is soaked with black ink and Horatio thinks that _if this isn’t a sign from God, nothing is_.

At the same time-

Hamlet had asked him to.

Hamlet had asked him to in such a sweet swan song, Horatio hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since he’d knelt down on the floor next to his dying prince and let the smell of dark blood soak him so thoroughly that all the perfumes of Arabia couldn’t even sweeten his little hand.

Horatio sighs, turning his eyes towards Heaven in some sort of silent supplication for mercy, aid, inspiration, God-knows-what. He’s going to have to buy more paper. He’s nothing more than a commoner, a university student lucky (or unlucky) enough to have made the acquaintance of the late prince, and he has the gall to try to write a play about the fall of Denmark and the death of the court that ruled it?

The ink-stained page stares up at him, accusingly, as it had been from the beginning, and Horatio sits down and picks up his pen and writes in perfect cursive, “FRANCISCO: Who’s there?” underneath the opening of the scene.

“I wish I knew,” he mumbles. He’d name the play _Hamlet_ , of course. It all came back to _him_.

\---

Horatio is only on Act I, Scene IV, and he _hates_ exposition and he _hates_ writing and he _hates_ how much paper he’s wasted on drafts and outlines and vaguely-poetic-but-ultimately-useless lines and he _hates_ how aggravatingly difficult it is to write Hamlet because of how he seems to come off as the stereotypical _tragic hero, woe is me, I am constantly in a struggle between my morality and my responsibilities_ , but the issue is that that was _exactly_ how Hamlet always used to act back when-

(If Hamlet was reading the lines that Horatio was writing for him, he’d probably -- no, he’d most definitely -- throw a fit.

Everyone else would nod and say _yes, dear Horatio, thou hast truly captured the spitting image of the late young prince’s character_.)

…

It’s frustrating, to have to relive the exact moments where Hamlet decided to set his life at less than a pin’s fee, sinking deep into the cellarage that his father had been supposedly trapped in for so long. Sure, the matters of honor and revenge and duty are supposed to be set at a higher standard than one’s own life, but it was all still so ridiculous-

Horatio’s startled out of his furious reverie by a sudden knocking at his door, his pen dragging a dark line across the page that he’s working on, and he curses even though he knows that he was planning on crossing out half of the dialogue in it anyway. It’s the principle of the thing, not the-

There’s the knocking again, more urgent than before.

Horatio hadn’t realized how stiff he was from sitting at his desk every night, hunched over his pen and paper for hours on end as he wracked his brain in some vague attempt to combine his memories with what little creativity had been sapped out of him by his medical studies. He’s barely thirty, and he already has back pain- _God, I’m becoming one of those friars Hamlet and I used to make fun of_ , he thinks. He can only imagine how old he’ll look by the time he’s done with the play -- not to mention all the readings he had to catch up with for his actual studies, speaking _of_ that, did the professor say that there would be an assessment tomorrow, Christ, he’s behind-

“Horatio, sir, are you awake?” The muffled voice behind his door is high, reedy, an underclassman. There’s more knocking. If nothing else, Horatio had to grudgingly admit that they're _persistent_ , for an underclassman.

He sighs and steels himself. When he was an underclassman, he didn’t _understand_ why the older students hated him, but now that he’s almost a graduate, he _definitely_ does.

The door opens and _that’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, right there-_

“Is there a spectre behind me?” Not-Rosencrantz smiles nervously, in a way that Rosencrantz never would’ve, but now Horatio’s blanking on his _actual_ name -- arguably, a much bigger issue than the student’s strange similarity to an already-dead man. “‘Tis your protégées, you have tutored us before-”

“Ah, a mistake, you have tutored _Løvenbalk_ before, not me-”

“The past tests have been quite unkind to thee as well, Kretzschmer-”

“Thy poor work is thy own fault, dear friend-”

“Is this a pressing matter?” Horatio cuts in, his typical politeness tempered by his anger and exhaustion over his wreck of a manuscript and the fact that it’s near midnight and he’s still can’t actually remember if he has an anatomy test tomorrow.

“Yes!” the two students chorus.

“Well, speak your minds freely,” Horatio sighs.

“We have heard of your great success, see.” Kretzschmer straightens himself up with a conspiratorial smile, and _oh no,_ Horatio _does_ remember these two- they were bright, but lacking in a certain sort of _tact_ , per say. He steals a glance at the clock -- well, it isn’t too late yet, he supposes, but he’d still like to get a _few_ hours of sleep tonight.

“You dealt with those diseases that plagued Denmark very efficiently!” Løvenbalk grins, but he clasps and unclasps his hands nervously. “We believe-”

“ _Løvenbalk_ believes-”

“That there is a cursed spirit, see, haunting the hallowed walls of Wittenberg, of a nature similar to that which you dealt due justice on-”

“‘Tis but a fantasy,” Horatio immediately says. There’s no way he’s going to be forced to deal with _two_ ghosts this year. It’s not even Christmas yet. “I will go, and ‘twill not appear, and you will look like a fool.”

“It plagues my dreams!” Løvenbalk insists, his eyes wide, looking like he’s about to seize Horatio’s arm in desperate supplication. “I can see it now -- it floats down the hallway, a spitting image of the late prince-”

“See, _that_ is your imagination-”

“Thou hast seen it, thou would be _mad_ to insist that the phantom does not look alike-”

“The prince?” Horatio narrows his eyes, studying Løvenbalk’s expression. There’s something- lacking in it. Rosencrantz had a shadow in his eyes, a certain cunning in his smiles, that Løvenbalk distinctly doesn’t; all Horatio can make out is the simple, worldly fear that seized his own self when he saw the elder Hamlet’s ghost rise bloodless from the snow. “Lord Hamlet died in Elsinore.”

“They are one and the same!” Løvenbalk sighs, looks pleadingly at Kretzschmer. “Thou hast _some_ recollection, I am sure of it.”

“‘Tis a fantasy,” Kretzschmer scoffs, but there’s doubt in his eyes. “‘Twould be nice, though, to have a third mind confirm my suspicions.”

“I will go,” Horatio says, but- “Tomorrow night.”

“ _Now_ ,” Løvenbalk insists. “This agent, of Heaven or Hell, I know not which, hath prevented us from rest for far too many nights, already.”

“‘Tis not yet the witching hour,” Kretzschmer reminds them both.

They look at Horatio expectantly.

Horatio sighs, grabs for his coat, and puts out his candle.

\---

“Follow me here,” Løvenbalk whispers, and every cell in Horatio’s body _knows_ that it can’t be the prince, it can’t be the dead Hamlet, why would the dead Hamlet be bound to Wittenberg, of all places, instead of Elsinore, the place where he was born and the place where he’d died and the only place, out of _all_ places, that should be rightly haunted by his spirit suffering through the flames of purgatory.

They’re not in the halls, though -- at least, not anymore. Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer had led him to Hamlet’s old dormitory hall, where Horatio had half-expected, half-dreaded seeing Hamlet’s ghastly visage, pale as death, his disheveled hair framing his face like a broken halo, but it’d been empty by the time they got there; most reasonable students were already in bed, after all, instead of hunting ghosts or writing plays _about_ ghosts at midnight. Horatio had waited for Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer to get through a brief lover’s quarrel, before they deemed it necessary to lead Horatio _out_ the door they came in from and back into the snowy courtyard where the three of them now stood, Horatio rubbing his hands together in some desperate attempt to keep the feeling in his fingers. He didn’t think that it’d be necessary to get fully dressed for a quick walk through the courtyard to Hamlet’s old dormitory, but that “quick walk” had, by now, fully evolved into a “long wait.” Løvenbalk paces up and down the yard impatiently, while Kretzschmer keeps an eye on his watch. The dim moonlight casts rays like fishing lines through the cloudy night.

“‘Tis bitter cold,” Horatio calls, echoing the words Francisco would say in the first scene of his play. He briefly wonders what’d actually _happened_ to Francisco -- if he’d been killed in Fortinbras’s attack or not. He briefly wonders how he’d managed to _escape_ , with Fortinbras’s eyes darker than even Hamlet’s were, at times. “And I am sick at heart.”

“Wait, wait, sir, ‘twill appear!” Løvenbalk exclaims.

“Thou art mad -- ‘twill not,” Kretzschmer retorts.

 _Sirs, both of you are pretty_ , Horatio holds himself back from saying.

“The phantom comes at midnight,” Løvenbalk insists, casting nervous glances back at the dormitory they’d left. “Mark me -- it comes in like the tide, knocks on the late prince’s door three times, receives no response, and stalks out again! I tried to speak to it, even in the language of the Romans, and yet it refuses to reply!”

“‘Tis simple folly, waiting for the wind to blow,” Horatio says, but a horrible sense of déja vu rises up in his throat. There’s Marcellus, who he’d written about only days before, pacing in the snow of the courtyard. There’s Bernardo, his spear at his side, wiping snow from his armor and pretending to be warmer than he actually is. Here’s Horatio, the unbeliever, in the midst of it all-

“Look!” Løvenbalk yells, pointing at the swirling snow in the distance, and Horatio’s head snaps up from the ground he’d been scrutinizing.

“My eyes must have failed me,” Kretzschmer laughs, finally tucking away his pocketwatch. “It hath been a quarter past the fated hour, and all that has been seen is evidence towards thy nightmares and bad dreams!”

“Nay, _mark it_ ,” Løvenbalk hisses, and for a second, the anger that wracked Rosencrantz’s expression is clearly written all over his as he points out at the white landscape beyond Wittenberg-

“‘Tis nothing more than apparition,” Horatio murmurs, under his breath, but there’s a _figure_ out there, in the snow.

“You mark it, right, Horatio?” Løvenbalk looks frenziedly between Horatio, Kretzschmer, and that damned shadow out in the distance. He discards propriety, grabbing Horatio’s arm and Horatio can _feel_ how badly his hands are trembling. “Dare it- do you dare it to _speak_?”

“‘Tis nothing more than _apparition_ ,” Horatio repeats, more loudly this time, and the ghost’s hazy outline sharpens and Horatio can hear it -- the crunching of snow underneath Hamlet’s boots, that half-chuckle half-laugh he did whenever he found something funny, his unconscious humming whenever he was trying to concentrate.

“I darest not meddle with this,” Kretzschmer mutters, backing away, and Horatio knows; these aren’t guards, these aren’t conniving spies, these are _children_ younger than he is and younger than Hamlet was at his death. He puts a hand on Løvenbalk’s shoulder and gently pushes him back towards the dorms.

“‘Tis not your fate to,” Horatio says, firmly. The ghost’s eyes flare, but the two students are already staggering back inside. “I will _make_ it mine.”

“Well, God yield you as well,” the figure in the fog says, daring to smile. “Mark me, Horatio.”

“‘Twould be a sin to mark anything more,” Horatio replies. There’s a tremor in his voice that he wishes he could hide. He stretches his hand out, almost to grab the ghost’s arm, but the air around it is cold to the point of frostbite and Horatio recoils in shock and realization and the figure is already plodding away into the snow with a slow, heavy gait, like the weight of the world is crushing its shoulders.

The dormitory door creaks open from behind him. Løvenbalk’s anxious babble, Kretzschmer’s worried questions, all sound and light and feeling come to Horatio like he’s six feet underwater and looking up at ghosts bobbing on the surface of the waves. Faint impressions of footprints lead out of the courtyard into God-knows what parts of the city, but Horatio takes off _running_.

\---

Act I, Scene IV. What was it that Horatio had just been finished condemning Hamlet for?

Right. He remembers. The _exact same thing_ that Horatio was doing now: running after some ghost that resembled somebody he’d loved in the past and refusing to listen to any reason or rhyme otherwise.

 _As the wise Greeks once said, art imitates life_ , the pedantic author of one of the theater arts books had written. Horatio wonders briefly if it isn’t, really, the other way around.

“Whither wilt thou lead me?” Horatio calls, panting. The ghost’s turned back around, now, staring balefully at Horatio like he’s waiting for him to catch up -- but goddamn, Horatio is a _scholar_ , not a soldier, and if this really _is_ Hamlet then he’d know that even just watching horseback races is both tiring and stressful for Horatio, a mortal who needs to _breathe_ , dammit.

They’re in the middle of some snowed-over park, not far from the university itself; Horatio can still see the tall Wittenberg buildings glowing in the dim moonlight over the dark shadows of the trees. The ghost itself is pensively watching the falling snow, just like Hamlet would -- rather, just like Hamlet used to. It’s got skin pale as death, disheveled hair framing his face like a broken halo, hands crossed behind his back and black cloak trailing on the ground, something that Horatio always used to chide Hamlet for because the edges got soaked the minute they went outside and Hamlet would be the first to complain about it while Horatio would nod obligingly and say _yes, my lord, I already told thee that this is a mere consequence of the weather thou refuses to pay attention to_ -

“Speak,” Horatio declares, with far more confidence than he really feels. It’s taking him every ounce of his self-control not to move, not to either run away or run _towards_ that figure whose outline flickers in the gentle drift of the snow, who looks so much like the late prince Horatio had thought he was done mourning for. “I’ll go no further.”

“There is no need to, dearest Horatio,” the ghost says, turning fully, now. His dark eyes gleam like diamonds in the moonlight. “Thou hast surely grown tired of following.”

“‘Tis been quite a long time, to be sure.”

“And thou still walks in the trail I leave behind! I could not find a servant in the world, licking my boots in hope of currying royal favor, as loyal as thy love hast been for me.”

Horatio has to remind himself to breathe. _Heaven or Hell_ , he thinks. _Whatever this cursed being is -- it could be Heaven or Hell_.

“My dear lord, Hamlet?” Horatio ventures.

The ghost lights up. “The same.”

“‘Twould be far kinder to the both of us if I rather refused to believe that thou hast taken on the horrid trappings of thy father.”

“From black woe -- blasted spirituality!” Hamlet’s dark eyes flare, and Horatio swears that the ground seems to shake, the snow circling Hamlet’s feet swirling unnaturally around him, like he’s the eye of the hurricane he always wanted to be. “I know not what bloody crimes Heaven has deemed my suffering worth! The hectic in my blood surely must have repaid it- in double, in triple…”

“Perhaps quadruple,” Horatio suggests.

“Yes, yes -- quadruple!”

“And yet, thou hast been bound to Wittenberg, not thy former kingdom of Elsinore,” Horatio murmurs, and a specific type of dread starts to creep into his heart -- the dread of undone due diligence, of tipping over an expensive vase and hearing the stomp of the king’s footsteps echoing down the corridor towards you, of knowing exactly what it is that you did wrong but confessing to it would hurt _worse_ -

“‘Tis an oddity, to be sure,” Hamlet muses. “What else -- I’m sure that those children that have taken over my hallway must also have been sent by the same demons that trapped me on this planet in the first place!”

“Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer?” Horatio’s taken aback -- sure, they were annoying, but to call them literal _hellspawn_ was the exact kind of exaggeration Hamlet loved and Horatio hadn’t ever expected to hear something like _that_ again. He can’t stop himself from bursting out in a high, reedy joke of a laugh, fighting the urge to fan himself with his hand because of how suddenly _hot_ he feels despite the freezing snow around him. “They pose little threat to thy former kingdom of a room!”

“Ah, thou hast not seen them every night, my dear Horatio,” Hamlet mutters darkly. “Either way, still, ‘tis an oddity to be cursed to this school, of all places.”

It’s not like Horatio doesn’t _want_ to say what he knows to be true, but his throat is locked shut like Elsinore’s old iron gates, the same way it closed up every time he tried to speak of those past weeks that’d been so stained with blood and dark eyes, darker than even Hamlet’s are now in the moonlight-

“My doubts, pray be nothing more than mere dream,” Horatio murmurs.

“Oh, come now, Horatio.” Hamlet smiles. “What can thou say that I do not dare scheme?”

“Thou didst not call upon me immediately when nature deemed it necessary for you to walk the earth again,” Horatio gently rebukes, avoiding the question. “ _My_ secrets are paltry, compared to thine.”

Hamlet colors. “Well- I believed that ‘twould be an easier business for the both of us if I did not drag thy yet unblemished soul-”

“‘Tis naught, ‘tis naught,” Horatio says, waving his hand dismissively. Then, a beat- “‘Tis fortunate that thou art here to provide a sort of… closure.”

“Closure,” Hamlet repeats. His dark eyes narrow; a shadow falls over his face. “The cock is bound to crow before _that_ key is ever cast.”

“‘Tis not uncommon for the sun to rise, my lord.”

“I already cannot find my own, and thou wants me to-”

“There are many twelvemonths ‘tween life and death. At least -- if fickle fortune chooses not to cut my strings before they snap of their own accord.”

“‘Twill be my pleasure to make sure of it, Horatio.” That sardonic smile that Hamlet had worn so regularly before his death spreads grimly across his face, and Horatio feels an odd chill run down his spine. “To play at romance with the whims and winds of fate -- well, the both of us have had a hand with her and in her, as thou surely knowest.”

“My _lord_!” Horatio protests. Hamlet laughs, and Horatio has to shut his eyes against the sudden gale that sends drifts of snow wreathing around him like a lost lover’s embrace-

When he opens them, the sky is streaked with dark clouds, blotches of gray spilled across it like paint blemishing a pale sky, like nature had picked up Hamlet’s black turmoil and smeared it across her own pearly livery, blood soaking into her clothes with misery as black as dye.

Horatio doesn’t go to class, even though he knows that Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer would be sure to worry -- in their own ways, at least. An ice-cold vice grips his heart like a wolf’s paw pressed against the panting rabbit’s.

Act I, Scene V. Horatio’s hand races across the page that day, sped along by wings of fear and newfound experience that Horatio wishes he’d never had to feel.

“HAMLET: Whither wilt thou lead me? Speak! I’ll go no further.”

\---

“Your marks have been falling,” Hamlet observes, and Horatio’s ashamed to say that he half-jumps out of his chair, spilling his inkwell across his desk.

Again.

By God, Horatio’s lost track of how much money he’s had to spend on ink and paper ever since he tried to become a playwright. The authors of those grandiose theater arts books must’ve seen _something_ in the business that Horatio’s obviously missing, because nothing of what he’s doing seems worth it in the least. Every time he sits down at his desk with another sheet of blank paper in front of him, he wants to tear his hair out, burn what he’s _already_ written, and promptly go back to bed -- not necessarily in that order, either.

“May I ask, my lord,” Horatio says, slowly, without turning around. He rights his inkwell -- too late, of course, but at least it’s standing, now. “How is it, that thou hast found thy way into my dorm?”

Hamlet doesn’t miss a beat. “Thou art implying that I, thy truest and kindest hawk, hath not spent more time in this room that even thee? Even the frailest, most piteous of women would curse at Heaven if they knew the hand that Fortune hath so lamentably dealt them, especially when dealing with men such as thee!”

“A sacrifice, but one I am willing to make,” Horatio drawls. “Thou surely must apply, as those wintry Russians do, to become a drop in their oceans of martyrs.” He stubbornly refuses to look back at Hamlet, instead choosing to focus his attention on whatever lines he’d left off on the night before. The beginning of Act II -- _oh_ , he remembers. He’s been trying to work this one out for the past few nights to no avail, and with Hamlet here now he’s not going to get _anything_ done.

Hamlet’s eyes light up. “Mark it! Me, a saint! The patron of love spurned, the cause of which can be heard in lone scholar’s rooms in the wee hours of the morning.”

“Aye -- Saint Hamlet, offering as much care to those spurned women as thou cares for thyself, I hear.”

“Fie, ‘tis more that thou art _listening_ , my dear Horatio.”

Horatio can’t help the laugh that springs unbidden, to his lips. It’s almost as if Hamlet is still, well-

“Enough,” Hamlet commands, and Horatio finally turns at that. A shadow of a smile plays at the edges of Hamlet’s mouth. His boots are soundless, even upon the dorm’s creaky floor, and he leans over Horatio’s shoulder to look at the paper spread across Horatio’s desk. “What is it, then, that thou hast kept thyself so busy with? ‘Tis _rare_ , to see something so valuable that thou would dare forsake thy studies for it!”

Horatio takes a minute to process exactly _what_ Hamlet was scrutinizing so carefully.

God have mercy, he hasn’t played the role of a _playwright_ for more than a week, and he’s suddenly _very_ aware of his absolute inexperience and inadequacy in anything having to do with “writing” or “creativity,” especially when compared to Hamlet, who might as well be considered the ghost of the theater himself.

“‘Tis nothing more than a simple flight of fancy, my lord,” Horatio sputters, and he almost spills his inkwell for a _second_ time as he snatches up the still-wet pages he’d just been drafting. “I have merely been- well, uncommonly distracted as of late, and this is nothing more than the products of a diseased- a diseased wit, so to say-”

“Fool, give it here! The ink will be smeared,” Hamlet laughs. Color -- that cursed, everpresent judge of emotion -- rises quickly to Horatio’s face. Hamlet reaches over to pluck the manuscript right out of Horatio’s hands and Horatio wouldn’t risk _tearing_ the pages so he _knows_ that he’d hand them over and he fights the urge to drop to his knees in supplication to God Himself and pray that He chooses to stop the ever-turning wheel of fate-

Hamlet’s hands pass harmlessly through the pages, and both of them pause.

Right.

It’d been almost as if Hamlet was still, well- 

Alive.

“Apologies, my dear lord.” Horatio is the first to speak, even though, he’ll admit, he doesn’t really _want_ to do much of anything besides melt into the wooden planks he’s standing on. “I forgot, momentarily, that thou art-”

“Nay, ‘tis I,” Hamlet interrupts. The candlelight passes through him, throwing thin, beggar’s shadows onto the wall opposite him. An unreadable expression is on his face. “I merely hold the ghost of the string of life in my talons, and yet I still make the futile attempt to call it a rope!”

Horatio thinks briefly of caged lions at the circus, collared tigers at freak shows, caught in nutshells far too small for their bad dreams, and-

“As I said, ‘tis nothing more than a flight of fancy- a play, if thou even dares to call it that,” Horatio bursts out, impulsively. Hamlet’s head whips around, and Horatio feels his heart simultaneously jump into his throat and sink into the bottom of his stomach. “Thou surely must laugh at my weakness. The distraction -- ‘tis nothing more than art, shadows, sciamachy.”

“Sciamachy- the scholar Horatio, turning his attentions from his studies to work on a _play_?”

“I- well, ‘tis nothing _more_.”

“With five acts?” Hamlet’s expression is changing in a strange way that Horatio’s not sure if he likes the look of. “With- with scenes, settings, characters-”

“Be truthful, my lord, dost thou think _I_ to be a ghost of times long past?”

“Thou art a scholar, not a playwright!”

“Well, I have the gall to try!” Horatio cries indignantly, while Hamlet, whose scowl had slowly and steadily been morphing into a smile, has the gall to _laugh_.

“I dare not imply else! Give it here,” Hamlet says, his eyes sparkling. “I will speak the lines of the main character! ‘Tis truly a night to celebrate -- my mere presence, turning the artless doctor into an artful playwright, God truly hath given me such divine blessings-”

“Thou art jesting, dear lord, I have not written _clowns_ into my play-”

“I do not _jest_ , and I _never_ clown.”

“Thou was certainly _raised_ by one.”

“Yorick was a jester, Horatio!”

“‘Tis little _difference_.”

“Ah, but when I talk to thee, these little differences do make -- the _greatest_ difference.” Hamlet grins. “‘Tis not the head of the matter, besides. Thou must have a title for thy passions? Nothing that has fed upon the unfulfilling sap of love or tempestuous angst, I know thee too well for that, and ‘tis only the groundlings that fall for empty plates such as those. And the actors- I must see at least _one_ rehearsal, thou must arrange for that! Tell me, Horatio, the plot, the premise, I am open to all!”

Horatio doesn’t think he’s ever seen Hamlet so animated, before, in his life -- and in his death, he supposes. Hamlet being _excited_ was Hamlet stepping out of the shadows at the edges of the room and deciding to participate in the conversation. It was only theater that could get his eyes to gleam, that could breathe life into his complexion, and Horatio thinks that what he’s about to say is going to tear all that down but-

“Hamlet,” Horatio says, simply.

Hamlet tilts his head, that ironic smile he always wears only growing wider. “Certainly, ‘tis my name.”

“Nay, I am not talking about thee,” Horatio says, his mouth dry. “The play, I mean. I chose the name- _Hamlet_.”

He sees the cogs turning in Hamlet’s mind, and then there’s a single moment where the two of them know that Hamlet’s realized _exactly_ what the play’s about, and Horatio can’t decide whether or not he should _really_ start praying to God in the hopes of transforming, immediately, into a colorless slime that can melt into the floorboards.

“Hamlet,” Hamlet repeats, slowly. “Well- I was not wrong, certainly, ‘tis my name.”

“A tragedy,” Horatio says, and now he can’t _stop_ himself from talking. “A tragedy about revenge, betrayal, loss, and all that thus follows after. The late king is poisoned by his dear brother, but Fate plays unjustly, allowing the latter to take the throne despite his glorious misdeeds. The true heir of the throne, then-”

“-decides to take his revenge,” Hamlet finishes, a strange tone creeping into his voice. “Marry, how tropically!”

Horatio’s sudden confidence has _definitely_ faded, at this point, because he feels himself struggling for words again. “I- I did say, my lord, that ‘tis nothing more than a flight of fancy.”

“No, no -- do not call _me_ the fool, and then play yourself for one! I beseech thee, thou _must_ continue.” The odd look that Hamlet had has flared up into firey determination, but his eyes have ironically darkened in a way that Horatio’s almost taken aback by -- the pinpricks of light from Horatio’s candle seem to sink into that inky blackness like they’re sinking into tar, the moonlight flooding in from the window shies away from Hamlet’s face like an innocent maiden fleeing the wolf pursuing her. “The serpent that poisoned me -- well, he shall meet his judgement by thy hand, in both action and art, I swear it!”

“‘Tis an awful business,” Horatio murmurs. “I should not-”

“‘Tis thy duty to set it right.” Hamlet smiles, and motions at the table. “Read for me, Horatio! Nay, I will read my own lines -- I pray, thou hath not made me say anything too _vulgar_ -”

“The common men and women did love you for a reason, my dread lord,” Horatio says, and he can’t help a smile from rising to his face at Hamlet’s feigned shock. He gently sets the wrinkled pages of his manuscript down back on his desk, putting them back into their proper order, ink smears and all. “Thou can still play the part of the actor, I assume?”

\---

Horatio doesn’t notice that the cock’s crowed until he realizes that he’s been waiting for Hamlet to read the next line for longer than even one of Hamlet’s typical dramatic pauses were, finally turning around only to see the slanting rays of the pink sun starting to flood his small dorm. The aching of his joints, the heaviness of sleep, the cramping in his fingers, everything hits him all at once and all he wants to do is wrap himself in his covers and never think about writing again.

Wet ink smears like black blood across his hands, but he manages to push his manuscript to the side with what little consciousness he has left, sinking into sleep with his head pillowed in his arms on his desk, instead of making the enormous effort to walk the couple of steps to his _actual_ bed.

(Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer have the gall to snicker slyly at Horatio when they see him staggering down the hallway to his late-afternoon classes, asking him what woman he’d been with so late last night that he thought was worth skipping all of Anatomy and Physiology for.

Horatio fights the urge to tell them that instead of a _woman_ , he’d spent the time chatting with the ghost that the two of them had been so fearful of, the night before, who had in fact claimed that _they_ were demons from a deeper level of hell than the spectre itself was.

He doesn’t, but only because he thought of that retort half-an-hour later in the middle of class, while replaying the conversation inside his head instead of listening to the teacher talk.)

\---

“Ah, Horatio, I have been so wracked with the lethal sicknesses of uncertainty and doubt, lately!” Hamlet begins, pacing the floors of Horatio’s dorm, as he’d been doing for so many nights, now.

It’s strange, what can so quickly become nothing more than simple routine. If anybody else saw the late prince’s shadow suddenly fall across their wall, they’d call an exorcist -- but Horatio just sighs, smiles, and tries to pick up his writing where he’d left off the night before. Act III, Scene I. Right. Horatio counts the familiar one-two heartbeat of syllables and meter almost unconsciously under his breath, while Hamlet spills his heart out in the background.

Hamlet had seemed almost like a fey the first night he’d showed up, glowing in the midnight moonlight of Horatio’s window, but now he seemed less fey and more, well-

“Do you mark me, Horatio?”

More _human_ than he even used to be.

“Clearly, my lord,” Horatio says, even though his focus is centered on the written _Hamlet_ instead. The ghost Hamlet was a great help in determining the pure _accuracy_ of the events that Horatio attempted to faithfully transcribe, but in terms of the actual writing -- well, his most common critiques were that Polonius’s lines needed to be longer for the audience to truly understand how _boring_ he was to listen to. Horatio had stopped taking suggestions from him after the second time Hamlet tried to pantomime what a typical conversation between him and Polonius looked like -- by himself, trying to play both people at once.

(Oh, it was funny. It was _hilarious._ The issue was that Amery, the student living in the next dorm over, had knocked softly on his door the second time, asking Horatio to please keep whatever he was laughing about to himself. Horatio had to frantically scramble to make up an adequate reason for _why_ he was laughing so hard to himself, while Amery narrowed his eyes in tired confusion trying to figure out whether Horatio had snuck somebody into his dorm in the middle of the night or not.)

“I frequently contemplated this problem in life, and now -- because my days are filled with nothing more than accursed fire and purgation, the question strikes at my mind with more fury than a thousand spears against the shields of a Roman phalanx!”

“Thou hast not described the issue at hand, my lord,” Horatio says, mildly. He used to think that he was making Hamlet’s dialogue too dramatic -- but once Hamlet had started visiting, he’d been firmly reminded that if anything, he wasn’t making it dramatic _enough_. Speaking of that, though, it was Hamlet’s turn to actually _speak_. It’d make sense to have Ophelia here -- well, Horatio _has_ to have Ophelia here, Hamlet had told him the whole story of what’d actually happened -- but she was so _scared_ of Hamlet at this point, there had to be some kind of transition-

“To be, or not to be?” Hamlet muses. He’s floating a few inches off Horatio’s desk, his legs crossed, his eyes narrowed, as he stares out at the steadily-rising moon. “ _That_ is the question.”

Horatio’s thoughts screech to a halt.

“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…”

His hands start moving before he even consciously realizes what he’s doing.

“...To die, to sleep -- to sleep, perchance to dream- Horatio, art thou listening to me?” Hamlet stops himself halfway through his own soliloquy as Horatio’s hand flies across the page, trying his best to transcribe _whatever_ it was that Hamlet was going off about.

“I- of course, my lord!” Horatio affirms, looking up at Hamlet’s scowl with as wide-eyed a look as he can bear to muster. “I dare to do nothing less.”

Admittedly, Hamlet _does_ narrow his eyes in confusion at Horatio’s feigned innocence, but he turns back to the window and keeps talking anyway and Horatio _wishes_ that all writing would come this easily.

\---

(To be fair, the next few scenes do.)

Hamlet recites the miching mallecho of _The Mousetrap_ and the consequences for the mice like he’s a world-renowned actor and Horatio catches himself wondering how, exactly, any street-educated player would ever be able to compare to the vivid visions that Hamlet’s reconstructed with his sheer words and actions alone.

Horatio writes and augments and diminishes the scenes as he sees fit -- not because he wants to, but because if he doesn’t, watching anybody try to put on the masks of memories not molded to their forms -- _what’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba!_ \-- would be, frankly, embarrassing to watch when Hamlet’s here for him alone, in (slightly less than) flesh and blood, to fill in the gaps of that bloody story that Horatio had been so unfortunate to personally play a role in.

It’s-

Somehow, Horatio feels like it’s less of a _resolution_ and more like a _beginning_ , but he’s not sure what’s actually supposed to be dawning on the two of them when Hamlet disappears as soon as the first pale streaks of morning rise above the horizon.

Either way, Act III is done -- and for how Horatio bitterly cursed Hamlet’s “editing process” earlier on as they read through the exposition together, he just hopes now that Hamlet doesn’t ask _how_ Horatio managed to get so proficient at playwriting to finish another entire act in only a few days’ time.

\---

“Good night, mother!” Hamlet reads. A frown flickers almost imperceptibly across his face, but after a lifetime (and a bit more than _that_ , besides) spent reading his prince’s emotions, Horatio catches the displeasure before it can escape the room. He knows _why_ , of course, Hamlet doesn’t exactly approve of the last few scenes, but-

Well, a few minutes of silence to let whatever wave of emotion is swamping Hamlet’s mind to really _sink in_ wouldn’t kill him, at least. He’s already dead, anyway.

“The events are not quite… I am the protagonist of this play, Horatio,” Hamlet begins.

“I would hope thou art, my lord,” Horatio says. “Or I would have to change the title of the play entire, if ‘twas not about thee!”

“I know, and yet- thou realizes that my- my words, they did not cut men to the _bone_. ‘Twas all antic disposition, as thou did state earlier on.” Hamlet motions imperiously at the pages of the manuscript piling up next to Horatio on the desk. “I remember! ‘Tis all explained in the first act! The audience would not believe ‘twas anything _more_ , and yet thou writes as if-”

“As if ‘tis _much_ more,” Horatio finishes, and Hamlet nods vigorously and Horatio, for a second, feels much, much older than he thinks he and Hamlet really are.

“‘Twas mere- antic disposition,” Hamlet concludes, with a strange flourish, like he’s trying to prove something that he doesn’t exactly believe in. “Thou wilt change it, I am sure.”

“My lord, if I am so bold to say -- thou did little to make it _seem_ that way,” Horatio says, and the words echo in the half-empty room.

“If I dared falter-”

“I was not sure of it, myself, my lord.” Then, a pause, and Hamlet opens his mouth to speak but something almost _vindictive_ flashes like lightning through Horatio’s mind and- “Thy lover, Ophelia, almost _certainly_ was not sure of it either.”

Hamlet flushes, his eyes darkening and sparking and Horatio feels an incredible, invisible force almost pushing him away -- that same force that’d struck fear into his heart when he’d seen the ghost of King Hamlet, that same unease when he’d realized that the time was out of joint, and he almost has to tear his eyes away from the flaring fury in Hamlet’s-

“I did not- thou knowest that I did _not-_ act purposefully to drive her into madness,” Hamlet says, slowly, like he’s tasting every word, trying to make their saccharine sweetness linger in his mouth. “I loved her, Horatio.”

“‘Tis not a denial of _that_ ,” Horatio retorts. He wants to tear apart his own manuscript for the tenth-hundredth-thousandth time, god _damn_ the money he was wasting, it wasn’t worth the time and effort and sleep and that smoldering _something_ in Hamlet’s eyes.

“Thou must know that love comes in many forms.”

“I am merely playing the part of the scribe, to both thy memories and my own. This did not -- this never did seem like _love_.”

“I dare not claim that it _seemed_ , merely that it _was_ , Horatio! I was forced to -- my hand was not my own.”

“A forced temper may not play the same role as a feigned one, but their consequences are still the same, my lord.”

“I would not have- Polonius was in the way, thou knowest that well!” 

“‘Twill not be changed, Hamlet. ‘Tis nothing more than the truth.”

“Thou makes me out to be a _villain_ , a heartless villain-”

“And thou certainly did _seem_ to be one!”

“Thou art writing a _play_ , Horatio! The audience need not know that- nay, I was _never_ mad in the first place, thou surely are exaggerating _far_ too much even for the art of theater!” Hamlet’s towering over Horatio, at this point, and all of a sudden Horatio can’t _stand_ the unease, the suffocation, he’d had _enough_ of that when Hamlet had come back from Britain-

Horatio’s suddenly on his feet and his hand’s in a fist from where it hit the table and the inkwell has fallen over again. “I am working to _accept_ that my memories speak truth, and you are still -- Polonius and Claudius’s voices were not the _same,_ Hamlet, and _that_ is something even you dare not deny!”

That smoldering _something_ crescendoes into a flame that leaps from Hamlet’s eyes, that burns down the dorm around the two of them, and Hamlet’s face flicks between smirk-sneer-glower-grimace like he can’t decide what mask to settle on -- like he _needed_ any more masks -- but Horatio is still standing, as impervious to disease as he used to be-

“Now _I_ am in the way,” Horatio says, more quietly than he expects himself to, and the fire’s been extinguished, the curtains covering Horatio’s window barely fluttering in the harsh wind. “It _cannot_ be changed. This is thy own story, after all.”

Hamlet reaches for the inkwell, to right it again, but his hand phases through it instead. Horatio feels a lance of pain echo through his head and he realizes how tired his hands are, how rigid his shoulders are, how much his eyes hurt from staring at his own perfect, neat cursive in dark black ink night after night after night. He takes a breath. His hand passes over Hamlet’s as he rights the inkwell himself but there’s no biting frost there, as he expected -- just a distant, gentle draft, like even that eternal Hamlet, in (slightly less than) flesh and blood, was fading away from him.

“If thou wants the world to know what happened, thou must realize that- ‘twas not as simple as revenge should be, sweet lord,” Horatio says, slowly, like he’s tasting every word.

“It could have been,” Hamlet scoffs, bitterly. “I acted as blindly as the winged Nemesis’s holy sword.”

“There is no holiness in death, and by God, there never will be.”

“Unless-”

“Ophelia _died_ , my lord,” Horatio says, the words cutting as simply as that winged Nemesis’s holy sword was once meant to. “As did thy father, as did thy mother, as did Claudius, Polonius, Laertes, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and even _thyself_.”

Horatio finally, finally lets out his breath and collapses into his chair, his legs weak from God-knows how many nights without sleep. He turns over the last page of Act III so neither of them have to remember it anymore. 

When he looks up, Hamlet is gone.

\---

Wittenberg is silent for what feels like a long, long time.

Horatio had gotten used to seeing Hamlet perched on the edge of his bed, rising from his brimstone sleep with the moon every night; he’d grown accustomed to having somebody monologuing at him in the background while he tried diligently to remember the ghosts of words that the ghosts of the present were still saying; he would sit down at his candlelit desk with pen in hand and everspilling inkwell at his side and read lines of the play out loud and expect answers in return but instead it’s just _so damn-_

…

It’s quiet.

Horatio’d thought that he’d gotten _used_ to the quiet. He’d lived in it for a few weeks after the events of _Hamlet_ had played out, immersing himself in his studies, walking the streets of Wittenberg and taking his meals and going to bed all in that buzzing silence that had sunk so deeply into his mind, the same way that the smell of Hamlet’s ink-black blood had stained him so thoroughly that all the perfumes of Arabia couldn’t even sweeten his little hand, but that sort of silence wasn’t the same silence as the silence after a storm, the silence in the eye of a hurricane, the silence after tipping over an expensive vase but before the king’s footsteps echoed down the corridor towards you.

This quiet is-

Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer stop asking after Horatio’s health and potential love affairs, because he’s back in class, as awake and alert as ever, textbooks clutched tightly under his coat and homework turned in almost as immediately as it’s assigned. Løvenbalk thanks Horatio for chasing away the ghost that’d haunted their dorms and promptly forgets about the incident, and Kretzschmer buys him a meal instead of expressly wording his gratitude. The two of them fade away into the background of school life and study, only occasionally asking for his help whenever they score badly on a test or don’t understand a lecture in class. Horatio sees them pass by in the corridors, sometimes, commanding the attention of a group of chattering and laughing underclassmen, but his eyes glass over as he pretends not to be watching.

The campus librarian secretly sighs in relief when Horatio returns the theater books that he’d borrowed -- it really wasn’t _right_ , after all, for a young doctor-in-training to lose his mind to the incomprehensible world of arts and writing. It wasn’t a major loss, in any case. Horatio’s muse is gone and he’s barely making any progress on Act IV at all. He still had the faded memories of Hamlet, in (slightly less than) flesh and blood, bringing Horatio’s frozen past out of the ice they’d been imprisoned in, and that was all he needed -- right?

Horatio walks the still-frosted streets at night and doesn’t feel a pair of eyes boring through his skull, doesn’t feel a cold cloud of air hanging over his shoulder like a curse, doesn’t feel that smoldering _something_ in his chest or hear that firey voice haunting his waking dreams. A ghost’s voice -- it was foolish, a foolish endeavor, nobody could translate _that_ to pen and paper and black ink, and Horatio had tried his best but that was all that he could really _do_ when it came to the immaterial worlds of purgatory and death and recollection.

His mind is clear, for once, and it is so, so, quiet, and Horatio wonders, briefly, if Elsinore really _happened_ or if it was just as much fantasy as it was reality, if it really _was_ as simple as revenge and its consequences and there was nothing _more_ to it, nothing like _love_ -

Horatio’s steps are slow, kicking up the snow in his path as he saunters through the frozen quadrangle of Wittenberg. The moon is brighter than he thinks he’s ever seen it before. It illuminates his steps like he’s walking on both haunted and hallowed ground.

\---

There is a period of nothing more than just -- study.

Horatio pushes his manuscript to the back of his mind, refills his inkwell and takes care to make sure that it doesn’t spill, uses the paper he’d bought for _Hamlet_ to take notes and make drawings about the course that plague takes throughout the human body, instead. This is easier. Facts and diagrams are infinitely easier for him to handle, compared to poetry and prose -- as he’d always known they were. The former is his domain; the latter is-was-always-will-be Hamlet’s, but Hamlet is dead and gone and that is _that_.

(He knows, really, that he hadn’t-

Hamlet had asked him to tell his story, but thr manuscript’s unfinished and Fortinbras had given him a soldier’s funeral but Hamlet had never _seen_ it, had he.)

Hamlet isn’t _there_ (was he ever _there_ in the first place), but his presence is heavy around every corner -- Horatio turns his head and expects to see Hamlet walking a few feet behind him, his dark eyes and coat a welcome contrast to the falling snow, expects to see Hamlet’s hazy shadow cast across the wall, expects to see his play spread across his desk in the wee hours of the morning instead of the countless anatomy diagrams he’d drawn on his countless loose leaves of now-repurposed paper.

He tries to think, but his mind weighs heavy with nothingness, like he’s forgetting-repressing-not-remembering something that he used to find very, very important. It wasn’t like anybody’s there to remind him of what it is that he’s lost, though.

\---

“What is _that_?” Løvenbalk asks. He reaches over his biology textbook for it, grabs a sheet of wrinkled, folded paper out from the otherwise-perfect stack of Horatio’s notes. He waves it in the air, pretending to chide Horatio. “I thought that you were always the neatest out of all us students -- this is a _shame_ , Horatio!”

“He is still deigning to help us,” Kretzschmer snorts, snatching the sheet from Løvenbalk’s fingers and holding it out to Horatio. “Thou should be more respectful of a senior, especially one with near-perfect marks, unlike _thou_ -”

“Thou hath so much _cruelty_ in thee, Kretzschmer! Surely, the many dissections we have done have not gone to thy head-”

“Løvenbalk, thou should focus on thy studies instead of what you call my _cruelty_ -”

“I found it,” Horatio says, mildly, sliding a sheet of impeccably-done homework across the table in exchange for the folded note. Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer immediately jump on it like two vultures sighting an untouched corpse, copying it onto their own notes with the fervor of students who know that they have an assignment due the next period but conspicuously did _not_ do the assignment until their friend offered them their own to copy from in the last few minutes of lunch. He unfolds it half-suspiciously -- the paper seems old, like it’d gotten damaged during transport somehow but Horatio always protects his notes with more fervor than he protects himself, and it certainly isn’t his _handwriting_ on the page, either-

Oh.

How did that-

“Horatio?” Løvenbalk asks, inquisitively, waving a hand in front of Horatio’s face. “Are you alright?”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Kretzschmer snickers, before his face turns serious. “Nay, I jest. You _are_ very pale, though.”

“Ah- ‘tis nothing to worry about, ‘tis nothing,” Horatio murmurs, dismissively, but a numb feeling seems to be spreading across his face and down his neck like he’d been shocked to the _core_. He quickly gathers up his notes, snatching his homework away from Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer despite their protests, and gets up from the bench. “I just remembered something, I apologize. I have urgent matters, very urgent matters to attend to, I’m sorry, God yield you-”

 _He that thou knowest thine, Hamlet_.

It’s the letter -- the last letter that Hamlet had ever sent to him.

Horatio thought that he’d thrown it away, ages and ages ago, a metaphorical _lifetime_ ago, but here it is, untouched by everything except age, folded up neatly and slid between his notes like a primary-school love letter to his past and his heart stops because he thinks-

Hamlet.

And _Hamlet_ , he supposes, as well.

\---

Class passes in a blur. Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer pass him sly, concerned glances, but Horatio’s face is still numb and he can’t bear to think about anything besides the folded letter and his crumpled manuscript and he has to excuse himself halfway through class to use the bathroom and splash cold water in his face to try to wake himself up from _whatever_ dream he’d obviously gotten himself trapped in.

He doesn’t go back to class, though.

“He is dead and gone, lady,” Horatio hums, murmurs, sings under his breath. “He is dead and gone.”

Horatio saunters down the empty, silent halls, walks outside and paces the courtyard, his boots wearing prints into the melting snow. He knows the words, but he can’t remember the tune -- it was something from his past, something from Ophelia, something from the madness that Hamlet had caused-

“At his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone,” Horatio whispers, hoping for something- a smoldering _something-_

The walls can’t finish the song for him, though.

Horatio knows who can.

\---

“I mark thee,” Horatio says, Hamlet’s eyes boring into the back of his head from where he prominently isn’t. It’s a new moon, tonight -- Horatio feels the darkness more acutely than ever, shadows licking at the edges of the circle of light that his candle so bravely casts out over his desk. His pen is in hand, his everspilling inkwell at his side. “I pray thee, mark me as well.”

He knows what had happened -- _everyone_ knows what had happened. It was all the gossip of the court for the few days that the court was still in session: Hamlet, blood in his wake and staining his hands, insulting Claudius and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and even his own _mother_ , they whispered. He was with the Norwegians, damned traitor that he was. He had driven Ophelia into a frenzy and then left, taking that damned disease with him-

Act IV, Scene V.

Horatio cracks his knuckles, words flowing from his hands and memories even without the ghosts of books holding him back and that ghost of a prince watching over his shoulder, critiquing every thought that he dared to put to paper. It’s just- Horatio, his brain, his words, now. Hamlet’s presence hangs heavy over Wittenberg, Horatio can _feel_ it, and he knows exactly why Hamlet can’t go yet -- why neither of them could _let_ go yet-

“She sang?” Hamlet asks, from where his eyes are boring into the back of Horatio’s head from where he’s prominently perched on the edge of Horatio’s bed. “I- was not aware. I’m sorry.”

“You left me the letter,” Horatio says, instead of replying directly.

“I left thee no letter,” Hamlet scoffs. “I cannot even hold a pen, thou knowest that!”

“The one I-” 

But Horatio cuts himself off. If it wasn’t Hamlet, he wouldn’t ask. Even he knows what had happened to the last person who tried to question the whims and workings of Fate’s turning wheel.

“But she sang,” Hamlet says, snapping Horatio back to attention. “‘Tis a folk song, is it not? I have not read those words before -- no court musician has played anything so like, as far as I am aware.”

“She certainly made death look like it was holy,” Horatio replies, as easily and naturally as breathing is, and he wonders if Hamlet had ever truly left in the first place or if Horatio was just forcing himself to forget him.

“Now -- thou hast just said that there was no holiness in _death_ ,” Hamlet retorts. “I will not have thee going back on thy word!”

Horatio sighs, and tries to fight that smoldering _something_ that twitches at the corner of his mouth. Ophelia sings, in phantom song and dance, gliding across the black ink on the tip of Horatio’s pen as smoothly as starlight streaks across the sky. He can see her -- her wild hair flowing like a waterfall, her eyes brighter than the brightest of jewels, her voice like birdsong in the spring air. The nights would be getting shorter now, as spring set in. Horatio feels a brief pang of -- burning regret, bittersweet nostalgia.

“Nay, I do remember!” Hamlet cries pleasantly, smiling, humming the melody under his breath. “She _did_ sing this -- ‘twas a folk song I only heard once, but the tune is something I would not dare forget. To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day, and I a maid at your window...”

“...to be your Valentine,” Horatio finishes, scrawling down the words as they fall from Hamlet’s lips like cut diamonds from the edges of Horatio’s eyes.

\---

“It just occurred to me, Horatio.” Hamlet sighs, almost wistfully. He’d been doing that a lot lately -- a lot less talk, a lot more thinking, and while Horatio can’t say that he _misses_ the constant monologues, he certainly hated the silence just as much, so- this is certainly a nice _compromise_ , for lack of a better word.

“I was king, for a few moments,” Hamlet says. He grins, looking down at Horatio from where he’s perched on the edge of the desk. “After my serpent of an uncle died -- I was king!”

“Thou cannot be coronated without a proper ceremony,” Horatio says, matter-of-factly. “And the proper rites and confirmation-”

“Ah, but in _principle_ , ‘twas I that was the rightful choice,” Hamlet retorts, light-heartedly. “As if those Danish dogs would dare pick anybody else -- my father was a king amongst kings, as thou knowest!”

“And that same Hyperion’s son did jump into a grave, claiming that thou loved her more than the late woman’s own brother did,” Horatio says primly, committing the same scene to paper as he speaks. God, audiences might find this moment poetically beautiful, but Horatio’s just thinking about the sheer _dramatism_ of it all -- perfectly Hamlet, as they’re sure to know, by this point. From how Hamlet’s expression changes from a look of pride to a harsh, embarrassed wince, Horatio knows that Hamlet’s reliving the same night from an outsider’s perspective instead of from -- whatever disposition had decided to possess him in _that_ moment.

“A lapse in judgement,” Hamlet protests.

“If thou wishes to call it that. Surely, thou seest that being raised by Yorick has certainly made its mark in thy actions and manner of thought!”

“Fie, I am a one-man children’s theater even _without_ Yorick,” Hamlet mourns, putting his face in his hands. “I believed, for so long, that Laertes was driven by hatred for me, and me alone -- but it was a passion, instead, of a nature that even my cold mind could not comprehend-”

“If thy mind is cold, then Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer’s must be like the Danish seas!”

“Ah, but see, that is simple truth,” Hamlet says, trying to hold back his laughter. “Either way, ‘tis simple exaggeration! Thou surely knows _that_ , by now, seeing that thou art still writing my -- nay, _thy_ \-- play!”

“Tush, tush, ‘twill not make a difference.”

“Thou read the books!” Hamlet clears his throat, pretends to adjust a set of spectacles on his face. “If the play that one is writing is to have even the slightest chance of going down in history, it must be in possession of much _literary merit_ , a quality that enhances the meaning of the work-”

“The play has two _clowns_ acting as gravediggers,” Horatio scoffs, but he can’t stop himself from smiling. “They’re arguing over the strength of a gallowsmaker in comparison to -- a shipwright, a carpenter, God-knows who else, while throwing skulls to the audience-”

“They will throw skulls to the _audience_?” Hamlet gapes, clapping a hand over his mouth. “Even I, the critic and pioneer of modern performing arts, did not dare to think of something so _fantastical_! Horatio, thou truly art a playwright of a legendary calibre-”

“Thou knows what I meant!” Horatio protests, and Hamlet finally laughs, laughs openly, his face lit up like haunted and hallowed ground by the light of the candle and Horatio realizes, suddenly, that he can almost see _through_ Hamlet now to the budding trees outside, pinpricks of starlight dotting his skin through the frosted glass like pale freckles on even paler skin.

Once again, there’s that-

The sky lightens sooner than either of them think that it will, and Hamlet fades in that same peal of laughter that gives him so much _life_ even in Horatio’s freezing mind.

The quiet of the dawn -- the quiet that comes before even the birds chirp, the quiet where Horatio can afford to steal what little snatches of sleep he can get -- doesn’t weigh on his mind as heavily as it used to.

\---

“‘Tis why, is it not?” Hamlet reflects, floating a couple inches above Horatio’s desk, as Horatio’s used to seeing, at this point. Horatio flips the pages for him; Hamlet reads them calmly, not tearing it down as he did before, making comments here and there and musing at the similarity of the play to his own memories.

“‘Tis what?”

“Why I still walk this mortal Earth. Thou hast been holding me in thy heart for far too long -- ‘tis a burden on us both.”

“Certainly ‘tis _not_ a burden on me,” Horatio protests.

“Thou wilt feel much lighter when thou receives thy- closure, I am sure,” Hamlet laughs. “Already, ‘tis many a month, and I still haunt thee with dreams of blood, forcing thou to absent thee from thy own felicity, like ‘twas a toy of my own!”

“‘Twas a natural request, my lord.”

“‘Twas a _selfish_ one, Horatio,” Hamlet chides. “I was the son of a king, and I almost _was_ a king. ‘Tis my duty to put the needs of those I love above my own.”

Suddenly, Horatio feels oddly like-

Hamlet finally looks the age he is.

His eyes are still dark, his skin still pale, his legacy still muddied by blood he might not care to remember, but something _about_ him has changed. Horatio can feel it -- in the way he speaks, in the way he laughs, in the way he carries himself, even as a ghost. Or was it- Horatio that’d changed, and Hamlet had merely shifted with him, or was it a bit of both-

“Thou was surely noble enough,” Horatio says. “Even steel-armed Fortinbras gave thee a soldier’s funeral.”

“A gesture of peace, perhaps.”

“‘Twere you not there? ‘Twas a magnificent affair, even _for_ a funeral. Genuine grief is difficult to fake, my lord.”

“‘Tis not a simple business, waiting for a spirit to be formed -- and so soon after my death, as well! Thou truly wishes me to suffer for longer than I already have!” Hamlet pretends to swoon, catching himself before he phases through the wall of Horatio’s room, and Horatio groans good-naturedly and straightens out the final few pages of his manuscript, capping his damned everspilling inkwell and knowing that there’s still so much work to be done on the play but he’s done for the night, he’s done for this draft, he’s written it all out and let everything all go and the story can be told and it’s all finally _over_.

(It doesn’t feel like a _resolution_ , exactly-

It feels more like a _beginning_.)

Hamlet laughs, floating off the edge of the desk. “Is it already time for bed, my dear Horatio?”

“‘Tis late -- or early, whichever thou prefers.”

It’s already spring, isn’t it?

Hamlet is not quite- he’s _hazy_ , in an odd way, even when he’s the only thing that Horatio’s trying to focus on. Horatio _knows_ , of course. He thinks Hamlet does, too. Something -- some sort of antic disposition seems to possess him and Horatio gets to his feet and bows to Hamlet, deeply, like he’s a servant instead of a student. He can feel Hamlet’s gaze on him -- a pair of eyes, boring into the back of his head -- it had to be shocked, surprised at the least, but what Horatio is more worried about is whether that shock is mixed with anger or happiness or a deep, sighing sadness-

A hand -- a tangible, warm hand -- pulls Horatio to his feet.

“I am a ghost, now, not a lord anymore,” Hamlet laughs. His dark eyes shimmer with starlight. “Ah -- good Horatio, what a wounded name! Thou truly hast been more dear to me than the most loyal of vassals, more dear than the compassion of all my dearest friends and family -- to have sacrificed thyself to carry out a dead man’s wish-”

“Thou flatters me!” Horatio flushes, but Hamlet’s hand is still tangible in Horatio’s and he can see the same, sudden flush of pink that rises through the face of the sky out of the corner of his eye and _he knows_ -

“Art thou waiting for my permission?” Hamlet smiles, in that sardonic way he always did. “‘Tis almost sunrise.”

“‘Twill be little consequences if I skip another day.”

“Thou art a _doctor_ , not a playwright,” Hamlet scolds. “I thank thee kindly for taking on the mantle of the latter, but in the end, _I_ will bear the burden of that title!”

“As thou should,” Horatio says, softly. “As thou should.”

A pause, and then-

\---

Horatio wakes up to the bustling of students outside. He’s tucked tightly into his covers, feeling like he’s lost something very, very important to him, but the memory of it is hazy, in an odd way. His mind feels foggy, like he’s not sure about much, really -- except for the fact that he has an assessment that day and he’s pretty sure he didn’t study last night.

He looks over at the stack of paper on his desk. Oh, he _definitely_ didn’t study last night.

The events so dutifully recorded on those pages feel like they’d happened in an entirely different lifetime, but it’s all still -- _Hamlet._

“Good night, sweet prince,” Horatio murmurs. He changes quickly, wraps his coat tightly around him, carries his medical textbooks and homework with him out the door tucked under his coat. He’s not even sure what professor he has, today, let alone what the assessment’s going to be on -- but there’s Løvenbalk and Kretzschmer, grinning at each other and at their friends down the hall, and they catch Horatio’s eye and wave him down and immediately start introducing them -- to Schleswig, Falke, other underclassmen that Horatio’s not sure if he’ll end up even remembering the names of or not. Kretzschmer has an apologetic look on his face as he tries to whisper to Horatio about how Løvenbalk didn’t study and _definitely_ needed Horatio’s help, while Løvenbalk protests the entire time, saying _no, it’s_ Kretzschmer _trying to get free help from thee, ‘tis by thy grace that he’s even_ passing _, after all_.

“And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”

**Author's Note:**

> i literally felt like i was possessed when i was writing the first few scenes of this fic. like, i'm not even kidding. if my laptop was open, i was writing. i'd get struck with an idea while eating dinner, i'd whip out my phone and start writing. the teacher's going off and says something even vaguely poetic? oh shit, my notebook's out, i'm writing.
> 
> ...and then college apps happened, i took like a three-month break, and then these last few days of winter break i felt this demon start gnawing at me again and here we are, huh. i wrote the last 5k words of this in one three-hour sitting in one night. i fully edited and rewrote like half of this in two days. i don't know what happened -- i just know that when i sat down, it was bright out, and when i was done, it was midnight.
> 
> and surprisingly, i'm pretty happy with how it turned out! the soundtrack for this fic includes [literary nonsense](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OskXF3s0UT8), by eve; [those who carried on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlhgKHHqpL0), by ghost; [kilmer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmPoZ1BPcNY), by niru kajitsu; and [ithna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVDE0ergxv4), by yuu miyashita. hope you enjoyed reading! (-:


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